Notes and Essays -- John Brown

After G.O.P. leaders blocked additional aid to Ukraine, six Republicans and an Independent joined Democrats to force the measure to the floor against the wishes of the speaker. Damage from Russian strikes in Ukraine’s Donetsk region in February. The House took up legislation that aims to target Russia’s oil and gas sector, its primary source of wartime revenue. Credit... Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times By Robert Jimison Reporting from the Capitol June 3, 2026, 5:41 p.m. ET The New York Times Defying Republican leaders, the House voted on Wednesday to take up a bill to impose sweeping new sanctions on Russia and provide additional aid to Ukraine, after a bloc of G.O.P. defectors joined Democrats in an effort to ratchet up pressure on Moscow more than four years into the war. The bill, which still must win passage in the House, faces a difficult path to enactment, given divisions in the Senate over a sanctions package and objections from the White House. President Trump has ...

As an annual economic conference was set to begin, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine had targeted a navy base and an oil terminal in the region that includes Russia’s second-largest city. Smoke rising from the port of St. Petersburg, Russia, on Wednesday. Ukraine has been expanding a campaign of long-range strikes aimed at inflicting economic damage on Russia. Credit... Associated Press By Ivan Nechepurenko and Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times Ivan Nechepurenko reported from St. Petersburg, Russia, and Andrew E. Kramer from Kyiv, Ukraine. June 3, 2026;   Updated 8:30 a.m. ET ; see  also and also Ukrainian drones on Wednesday attacked St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, on the opening day of an annual economic conference that President Vladimir V. Putin has tried to cultivate into a showcase of a modern and prosperous country. It was the second time in a month that Ukraine had struck a major Russian city before an event important to Mr. Putin, as Ky...

Image that could not be reproduced properly: Russian service members walk in a Victory Day parade in Moscow on May 5. (Anastasia Barashkova/Reuters)    Opinion The past holds Russia prisoner. This cruelty in war shows how. Yesterday at 7:30 a.m. EDT By Antony Beevor Antony Beevor is the author, most recently, of “Rasputin: The Downfall of the Romanovs.” The deliberate brutality of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has raised a debate about its origins. Were killings such as the 2022 Bucha massacre “casual savagery,” as one commentator put it? Or did they derive from an ancient, underlying assumption in Russia that conspicuous cruelty is a necessary weapon of war? One can never generalize about a whole nation, especially not Russia, with all its different component nationalities and its split between Slavophiles and Westerners. Nor can there be such a thing as a DNA-based national character. At the same time, most countries are influenced, at least subconsciously, by a certain s...

 From Quora Elena Gold  ·  Follow Media analyst  16h What will happen if Ukraine fails to seize the battlefield initiative before winter and the war against Russia continues? \ Ukraine doesn’t need to “seize the battlefield initiative before winter”—there is an opportunity for that, but Ukraine can comfortably stay in defence, while destroying Russian pre-frontal logistics, oil infrastructure, and military manufacturing facilities, and increasing the rate of “deleting” Russian manpower at the front. The Ukrainian campaign of middle strikes on the Russian pre-frontal logistics is working. There are huge issues with fuel in Crimea, because the trucks bringing fuel are specifically targeted by drones—fuel burns well. Russia is losing 500+ trucks a day. To counter that, Russia is painting trucks in weird patterns of black and white (to confuse the AI targeting systems) and began placing armed soldiers every 100 meters by the road. I wouldn’t call it “desperation” like ma...